EVERY time one happens to be in the Robertson Walk area at lunchtime, the same questions pop up: Why is there hardly anyone in the restaurants? Why don't they just close during the day and open at night, just to save the hassle of catering to the rare walk-in customer?
Unless you're an established name like, say, Sage or Canele, it's tough to attract people if you're new with no prior track record. Such is the case for the recently opened Cugini Restaurant & Lounge Bar, which would have had a lunch crowd of zero if not for our table.
It's too bad since it's a nicely done up place - as a restaurant and lounge, it has the requisite aesthetic with the shimmery curtain demarcating the two areas, with velvet bar stools and black armchairs in the lounge. The dining area is sleekly understated with crisp white tablecloths and black chairs.
What spoils the otherwise slick look is the fake white rose on each table. Nothing cheapens a restaurant more than fake flowers and bad bread - it shows a tendency to cut corners, and come to think of it, Cugini's bread wasn't good either.
Delicate truffle and potato ravioli in a walnut butter and parmigiano sauce.
Despite the flowers and lapses in service (never put a girl who has no clue about waitressing on the floor - it's frightening for both her and the customer), the food is at least decent enough.
One thing that chefs Marco Collavizza and Ivan Negro specialise in would be their home-made pastas. We were rather impressed with the delicate truffle and potato ravioli in a walnut butter and parmigiano sauce ($27).
Light thin pasta sheets with just enough bite encased an almost airy mixture of truffle-scented potato, bathed in a not-too-heavy sheen of butter sauce. Ordinarily, you would expect such a carbo-laden dish to sit heavily in your stomach, but this one did not.
A Tuscany seafood soup ($13) was decent, even though the spicy tomato broth - make that a piquant gravy - was tepid rather than hot. Thickened with flour or cornstarch, it would have been better if it was more like a soup, and if there was more of it. It came with two pieces of nicely cooked fish and a large prawn of reasonable freshness.
Meanwhile, the $27 set lunch featured a tasty (again tepid) creamy pea soup with croutons and a main of pan-fried boneless pork loin cutlets in a cumin accented sauce. There were no complaints about the food, although we've had better value set lunches elsewhere.
Dessert was a passable panna cotta, while the highly recommended a la carte tiramisu ($13) was somewhat over-priced and over-hyped. More cream than mascarpone, and with hardly any cake, it was like eating whipped cream flavoured with coffee sponge than the other way round.
One reckons that dinner is probably a better time to head to Cugini's - lunch is so quiet that you have too much time to notice things, whereas the clubby ambience at night might provide more distraction. At least enough that you don't notice the fake roses.
Rating: 6.5/10
Cugini Restaurant & Lounge Bar #01-27/28 Robertson Walk
Tel: 6836-9541
From now till Nov 30, 2008, Citibank cardmembers enjoy 15% off total food bill at Cugini.
